2018 -19 NSERC and OGS Scholarship winners announced! And other news…

As we are about to begin the summer term at York University, we have a number of news items and scholarship announcements to share.

We have had significant investment in our student’s research this week with over 50K in scholarships awarded to team members. Our undergraduate research team won four NSERC USRA awards (10 now in the last three years). Last year we also had four awards. Team members were awarded two Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS) and two NSERC CGS graduate research awards this year. Congrats to Ben, Bronwyn, Chloe and Hannah.

Our team is visiting the 12th International Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods will be held in Honolulu, Oahu, April 23-27. Papers to be presented are:

Natalie Mazur, returns to our team this summer to work on an engineering education project of retention of women in engineering. This aligns with the 50/50 initiative at York University. Her preliminary results will be presented this May at York University, and in June at the Canadian Engineering Education Association Conference in Vancouver.

Our graduate course on Human Behavior in Fires continues this June. Click here for details. This is our third iteration of this course. You can read about learning objectives in a previous CEEA. The course was formerly taught at Carleton, but will now be offered to a larger consultancy pool in the GTA area. We will also introduce forensic investigation into the curriculum this year.

Our team slightly expands as two of our undergrad researchers become graduate researchers, Bronwyn and Ben. They will be studying timber and bridge fires respectfully. We are planning to advert a new graduate position in the coming months.

Announcements will be made shortly regarding four new industrial collaborations which aim to give graduate students on our team opportunities to engage with consultancy companies on industry related challenges in fire safety engineering.

We are working with collaborators on a new Springer book tentatively titled: Fire Resistance Assessment of Heritage Structures . This should appear by years end.

Dr. Gales was asked to speak on CTV news regarding house fires in winter. A clip of this interview is provided below: